[time-nuts] video of CSAC GPSDO

[Jim Lux]

On 11/4/13 6:51 PM, SAIDJACK at aol.com wrote:
> Hi John,
>
> well, I think he must have meant a new car back in 1971 :) That would be
> about right. It's not quite THAT expensive.

Ford Pinto sold for $1999 in the early 70s.  Not that I want to compare 
a CSAC to a Pinto, but...



>
> Symmetricom seized to exist as an independent company a couple of days ago,
>   they were bought out by MicroSemi..
>
> They do make great products, for sure. Please note that I do not think that
>   the NIST CSAC effort had much to do with the commercialized Symmetricom
> product.  Same funding, but competing groups I think. NIST never took it to
> commercial  grade.

We who work at National research labs and Federally Funded Research and 
Development Centers always face the "thou shalt not compete with 
industry" laws and regulations.  Each and every job or project we do, we 
have to prepare an analysis to show why we are uniquely suited to doing 
whatever it is and why the government shouldn't buy it from industry. 
This, in general, is a good thing, but it also does mean that sometimes 
the technologists are a bit separated from the customer experience 
(because developing the customer experience is something you only get 
by, uh, working with customers of a product).

So we get a lot of things to TRL 4 or 5, and it kind of languishes 
there, unless it's something unique (e.g. if you want to communicate to 
deep space probes, there aren't any industry sources with 70 meter 
antennas, cryogenic receivers, and 400kW transmitters).

Ideally, you work with some industry partner(s) who can take it to 
commercial reality.  And, hopefully, you stay in contact with industry, 
who can provide feedback on what is needed in the way of fundamental 
research.

A lot of the development of error correcting codes works this way, for 
instance.  Some government agency or FFRDC does the basic work, and 
comes up with a reference implementation, then the actual commercial 
implementations are done by someone else. Guys like Viterbi did their 
basic work at JPL. Turbo codes were invented at France Telecom.